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A Narrow Bridge

Page 21

by J. J. Gesher


  Langston could hardly contain his excitement. “I know we’re going to win. I can feel it in my bones.”

  “You’re not old enough to feel anything in your bones. There’s some pretty stiff competition here.”

  The various choirs sat in roped-off groups, each distinguished by the color of their robes. First Baptist quickly settled into its assigned pews, the singers fidgeting with the bright yellow overlays on their purple robes. The audience fell silent the moment 16th Street Baptist’s pastor stepped up to the podium. Pastor Shields was an imposing figure, barrel-chested and well over six feet tall. His voice rumbled out of his body as he introduced this year’s judges. They included a music professor from Spelman College, a congressman, and the longtime host of WPRZ’s “Gospel Hour.” Each was greeted with a polite smattering of applause. Twelve churches were competing, but everyone knew the trophy would likely go to one of the top three: the Prince of Peace choir, Calvary Baptist, or 16th Street Baptist.

  The Prince of Peace choir, some forty singers, sang a traditional Southern gospel song. Its closing chorus, with its strong harmonies, low bass, and bright falsetto, brought the audience to its feet.

  Calvary Baptist, last year’s winner, was a smaller group, only twenty. Their robes reflected African roots, with bold swaths of primary colors and graphic designs adorning their dashikis and headdresses. Their sound rang with percussion and the jubilant celebration of East Africa.

  The youth choir from 16th Street Baptist sang in a contemporary urban gospel style. While the lyrics had a spiritual bent, the song sounded more like the ubiquitous hip-hop on the radio. Mo rolled his eyes at the lengthy rap about faith and Jesus, while Langston drummed on his seat’s armrests.

  Finally, First Baptist was called to the podium. Mr. Day led the choir in Jacob’s song “Narrow Bridge.” Each of the choirs was impressive, but emotion set First Baptist’s performance apart from the rest. When Rosie sang her solo, the entire church came alive.

  “We’re gonna win,” Langston whispered. “Mom is so good.”

  The singers returned to their seats while the judges, heads together, conferred. Langston crossed his fingers and offered a silent prayer. The audience grew restless as the judges deliberated. Finally, the radio host handed Pastor Shields a folded sheet of paper. He took the stage to announce the winners.

  Mr. Day had warned the choir that an unfamiliar song could take them out of the running, so when First Baptist came in third, he was delighted. He never thought they’d place at all. Langston couldn’t understand why third place was considered a success. Hadn’t they lost?

  Jacob found Mo and Langston as they left the church. Langston couldn’t contain his disappointment, and tears dripped down his face. He put his head inside the neck of his shirt to hide his feelings.

  Mo said to Jacob, “They should mark up a boy’s shirt in sections like they do the cow map in the meat department. The sleeve is for cleanin’ your mouth, the cuff is for your nose, and the bottom is for wipin’ sweat off your face. But the neck of the shirt, that’s for when feelings get the better of you and you have to go all ostrich on the world.”

  Mo looked at Langston and shook his head. “I may be fuzzy, but I do recall being a boy.” He sucked his back tooth hard and walked away.

  Jacob crouched down next to Langston. “It stinks, doesn’t it?”

  Langston nodded, and his head popped out where it belonged. He used his cuff to wipe his nose. “I don’t know why God let us lose. I prayed all the way through the song. Well, almost all the way. In the middle I started clapping and forgot I was praying.”

  “God had nothing to do with it. I think we lost because the judges liked Calvary Baptist’s song better. Maybe we weren’t as good as we thought.”

  Langston stared at Jacob. “So God wanted Calvary Baptist to win again?”

  “Nope. They won because they did a better job…or someone slipped the judges an extra slice of cake,” Jacob said under his breath.

  Langston giggled. Jacob always made him feel better.

  By the time they arrived at the park, the prospect of copious amounts of food and socializing had turned disappointment into celebration. Each church group set up its own buffet tables and emptied vast quantities of homemade dishes out of coolers. The older children played Frisbee, baseball, and jump rope. The toddlers chased each other between the picnic tables and their mothers’ skirts, and the seniors congregated on camp chairs in the shade.

  As people walked by, they shook Jacob’s hand and offered words of congratulations.

  An elderly woman with a hat the size of a platter and a walker festooned with purple and yellow ribbons approached Jacob. “The minute they picked your song, I knew we were gonna win somethin’.”

  Jacob demurred, “It was Mr. Day and the choir.”

  “Stop being so modest. Who woulda thought a skinny white boy could make such a big sound?”

  She beckoned him to move closer and whispered in his ear, “That judge from the Gospel Hour? He was smiling so hard I thought his face would crack.” Jacob laughed and kissed her cheek.

  Suddenly he was hungry, very hungry. He’d been too anxious to eat earlier. The loaded picnic table beckoned.

  Edmond and his mother were circling around the pies, admiring all the choices. When Edmond saw Rosie commandeer a table, he approached.

  “Room for two more?” he asked.

  She looked up from her plate. “Sure.”

  Langston could hardly contain himself. He bolted down a few bites of food, stood up, and bounced his basketball impatiently. Jacob worked on his plate, and Edmond seized the opportunity. “Now that we’re done with Gospel Sunday, I’m sure you’ll be moving on. Where do you plan to go from here?”

  His tone was demanding and oppositional. Rosie stopped eating, and Edmond’s mother reached over and patted her son’s hand, signaling him to be quiet. The table was immediately strained with tension. Edmond conceded to civility. He turned to Langston.

  “I had skills back in the day,” Edmond said. “Let’s shoot around.”

  Langston shook his head. “Me and my friends are already playing Jacob.”

  Rosie was annoyed with all the men at the table. Langston was the least complicated target. “Me and my friends?”

  Langston immediately corrected himself. “My friends and I.”

  Revising Langston’s grammar sidetracked Rosie from correcting his rudeness to Edmond. She watched Langston dribble the ball as he made his way to the basketball courts. Jacob hastily wiped his mouth and followed.

  She offered an apologetic, “Raising a child is like domesticating a wild animal.”

  “Edmond was never rude as a child,” said Mrs. Scott. “He was polite and well spoken.” She punctuated her superiority by adjusting the collar on her blouse.

  All Rosie wanted to do was watch Jacob play ball with her son, but manners dictated that she turn her attention to Edmond and his mother. She’d never quite grasped the meaning of the word “fussbudget,” but after knowing Edmond’s mother she understood exactly what it meant. She felt smugly satisfied when she noticed that Mrs. Scott had deposited a visible thumbprint of grease on her blouse.

  CHAPTER 39

  Mo was putting away the picnic gear in the kitchen. After a near-perfect day, a cold front had moved in, and a light rain was falling. A layer of melancholy descended on him. Now that Gospel Sunday was over, what would he think about?

  Rosie carried a sugar-crashed Langston up the stairs and tucked him into bed. She changed into her sweats and came back down.

  Mo held up the cooler. “Where the heck does this thing go?”

  “Way up on the shelf in the pantry.”

  She dragged a chair from the table to reach the top shelf of the overstuffed pantry. Mo handed her the cooler. “Crazy to have something that you use once in a while take up so much space.”

  Rosie was suddenly serious. “Uncle Mo…”

  Mo stopped. “Uh-oh. You never call me Uncle Mo u
nless you mean business. What’d I do wrong?”

  “You didn’t do anything. I need some ideas…some advice.”

  As far back as he could remember, she’d never asked anyone for advice—not her mother, not her father, and certainly not him. Mo sat down opposite her. He figured something had happened with that jerk of an ex-husband.

  Rosie took some folded papers out of her purse. She handed him the first sheet of the yellow legal paper. It was the list of Jacob’s qualities and characteristics. Mo fumbled around for his reading glasses and studied the page. He couldn’t make sense out of the random words: carpenter, father, handyman, musician, teacher, New York, Jewish.

  Mo was puzzled. “What is this exactly?”

  “Jacob’s characteristics. What I’ve learned about him.”

  “I imagine he knows most of this about himself.”

  “I’ve been doing some research on the internet, and I’m pretty sure I figured it out. Who he is and what he’s running from.”

  She handed him the printout from the missing-persons database. Mo studied the picture for a minute. “I’m glad he got rid of that beard.”

  Rosie forced a smile. “That’s not all.” She handed him the article from The New York Times.

  Mo scanned the article and exhaled slowly. “He watched his whole family die.”

  “This is why he’s so shut down.”

  Mo sucked his tooth. “Most likely.”

  “How do we tell him that we know?”

  Mo looked at her.

  Her throat was thick with sadness. “You tell him. I can’t.”

  He took another moment to peruse the article. He pointed at the bottom paragraph. “Says here he’s got a mother. I’ll bet she’s the one who reported him missing.”

  “How do you survive that kind of loss?”

  Mo shook his head. There was no answer to the question.

  Rosie couldn’t sleep. She felt the exhaustion in her limbs and in the small of her back, but she couldn’t turn her mind off. Although she’d read the article a dozen times, she’d never thought about his mother. This woman had lost her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and then her son disappeared. She thought of Langston safely asleep upstairs in his bed. Jacob was someone’s son. His mother must be inconsolable.

  She would contact Jacob’s mother and ask her to come to Brent. The decision brought a moment of relief, quickly followed by doubt. If she asked Jacob for permission to contact his mother, it would be obvious that she knew his identity. He could disappear again.

  She tiptoed downstairs at three a.m. and turned her computer back on. It didn’t take much effort to find Hava Fisher, Jacob’s mother, in Brooklyn. She wrote down the phone number and the address and forced herself back into bed.

  The next morning, Rosie reached for her cellphone during her free period. She went as far as punching in the area code before she came to her senses. To Jacob’s mother, Rosie was a complete stranger, and the situation was far too complex to explain over the phone. A letter felt formal and disconnected. Rosie couldn’t imagine a single day without Langston. She felt obligated to travel to Brooklyn, to find Mrs. Fisher, and to tell her about Jacob face to face.

  Rosie arrived at JFK on a late spring morning. In Brent, her rose bushes were already in full flower. Here, there were only tiny buds on the trees, and a frigid wind was blowing. She taxied into Manhattan and checked into a midtown chain hotel. She remembered visiting New York with her mother when she was twelve. It was a whirlwind of sightseeing—as many museums and churches and historical sites as her mother could fit into a weekend. She remembered looking through the tour bus window at the hordes of people racing down Fifth Avenue. Where were they all going? Twenty years later, she felt the same way—too many people, not enough trees. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hear any birds.

  After a quick shower and change of clothes, she headed to the subway. The letters and numbers and directional signs overwhelmed her. She was embarrassed to ask a stranger for help, so she used her phone to figure out the stop closest to Mrs. Fisher. She needed to take only one subway to get to Brooklyn.

  The train was overheated and claustrophobic, and her sense of adventure had become deflated by worry. What kind of a stupid scheme had she undertaken? Why hadn’t she called Jacob’s mother or written her a letter, instead of embarking on this wild goose chase? What if the woman wasn’t home? Coming to New York was another meddlesome plan, poorly thought out and poorly executed.

  When Rosie emerged into the sunlight of Jacob’s neighborhood, she was overwhelmed. The flow of humanity on the sidewalk moved her forward. Brooklyn was a wild mixture of skin color and unusual garb. Latin music blasted from a small grocery store. Indian women in saris pushed strollers. Groups of uniformed children walked to a parochial school. The smell of something deliciously Asian hung in the air, making her stomach growl. All the people walked with purpose—work, shopping, school.

  She pushed away any earlier reservations about her mission. She’d carry out her errand, even if it felt foolish. She stopped a young woman for directions. With a heavy Russian accent, the woman pointed the way. The first few blocks were diverse, but then the neighborhood became distinctly traditional, the Orthodox corner of Brooklyn. She saw women in long skirts with scarves on their heads, and a sea of black-suited men with beards and hats. She had no way of knowing that she’d passed Jacob’s synagogue, the kosher bakery where he shopped, the corner where he last saw his family. She mentally rehearsed what she would say when Jacob’s mother opened the door.

  Rosie found the five-story brick apartment building where Mrs. Fisher lived. Deliverymen, struggling with a brand-new refrigerator, had propped open the entrance. She skirted around them, quickly found Mrs. Fisher’s apartment, and knocked.

  Rosie sensed movement behind the door and spoke tentatively to the peephole. “Mrs. Fisher?”

  “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested.”

  “I’m not selling anything, Mrs. Fisher. I know your son—Jacob. I need to talk to you.” The words tumbled out in a heap, nothing like she had planned.

  Hava opened the door slowly, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “You know Jacob?”

  Rosie noticed that Mrs. Fisher’s hands were trembling as she held the door open.

  “Yes.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Fisher. He is very much alive.”

  Hava mumbled a blessing and motioned for Rosie to come into the well-ordered apartment. Rosie noticed a wall of books, an upright piano in the corner, an oil painting of a Jerusalem landscape, and a schoolchild’s drawing.

  “Sit, please,” Hava stammered.

  Hava adjusted her headscarf and smoothed her skirt. They studied each other. Rosie noticed that Mrs. Fisher’s eyes were the same shade of blue as Jacob’s.

  Rosie told Hava everything—finding Jacob lost and disheveled on the steps of First Baptist, the weeks of silence, living in the church basement, and his work as a handyman. But she did not tell Hava about her personal relationship with Jacob.

  Hava interrupted, hurt in her voice, “Why didn’t he call me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So why did he send you?”

  “He didn’t. I came on my own. Jacob has no idea that I’m here. I found you on the internet after reading an article about your family’s tragedy. He’s never told me anything about his past.”

  She took out her cellphone and showed Hava a picture of Jacob with Langston. Hava had never seen Jacob’s adult face without a beard, but there was no mistaking the image. Her son was alive. Hava’s hand covered her mouth.

  “Where are my manners?” Hava asked. “You’ve been traveling all day. You must be starving.”

  Within minutes, Rosie was sitting at the kitchen table with a slice of coffee cake and a cup of tea. Hava kept looking at Rosie, waiting for more information.

  Rosie repeated everything she knew about Jacob, and then Hava pulled out one of her photo alb
ums. She narrated the story of her son’s life: excelling at the yeshiva, leading his basketball team to school championships, his beautiful singing voice, marrying Julia, and the three children. Rosie studied the pictures of Julia. She hadn’t expected her to be so beautiful.

  Hava stopped turning the pages. “Is he doing drugs?”

  “Drugs?”

  Hava went deeper, telling Rosie about Jacob’s problematic relationship with his father, his disappearance once before, and the overdose. “Thank God, his father shipped him off to a rehab center in Israel before anyone found out. At the time, I thought my husband was heartless, but Baruch haShem, Jacob returned a changed man.”

  Hava took several deep breaths. Rosie could see she was fighting to control her emotions. “When he disappeared, after the…explosion…I was terrified that he couldn’t handle his feelings, that he went back to drugs.”

  Rosie sighed. “These months…not knowing where he was…must have been torture for you.”

  Hava offered a wry smile. “For me, worry is a permanent state of mind.”

  Hava returned her attention to the photo album, to the tangible evidence of her son’s goodness. She showed her pictures of Julia, the wife who had made a fine home and given him beautiful children. Rosie learned their names: Yossi, Miriam, and Sarah. The older two looked like their mother. Sarah definitely took after Jacob.

  “I made a book for each of my grandchildren, pictures from infancy until a few weeks before their…” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes again filled with tears. She couldn’t even say the word “death.” Silently, she turned the pages of the photo album on her lap.

  Rosie told Hava about the Jacob that she knew. She led her through the clues that had helped her solve the mystery and brought her to Brooklyn. She told her about Jacob’s kindness to Langston. Then she told her about Jacob joining their church choir.

  Hava was shocked. “I can’t believe it. My Jacob sings gospel?”

  “Our church placed third in a gospel festival with a song he wrote for us.”

 

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